Landslides
by mirage24
Summary: It was only after his father's funeral that Lucas realized the real landslide was not one of regret or despair, but of growing up.


**Disclaimer**: I don't own anything about _seaQuest_ DSV or 2032, because if I did, Brody wouldn't have died.

**Originally, this story was written as a songfic, but due to the rules surrounding songfics on this site, I have taken those lyrics out. In lieu of them, I encourage you to look up the lyrics to **_"Landslide" By Fleetwood Mac_**, as this story was based on that song, or to search the song and YouTube and listen to it. For this song/story combination in particular, I feel it is needed, and am saddened to have to take the lyrics out of this here.**

**A/N:** This takes place sometime after "Spindrift" and as if "In Father's Footsteps" never surfaced on the internet or whatever, you know what I mean, haha :) .

* * *

**Landslides**

Though he should have, Lucas didn't find it odd that the military would sponsor and care for an event such as this. At least, not for a man who gave so much in the way of funds and research. But with Lawrence Wolenczak's death being so sudden, they thought it was the least they could do. Military themed funerals for non-military people... did it really matter these days?

Lucas himself dawned his formals for the brief moments he had to be in public, and for the service itself, where he now sat in near silence—the only motions rising from the over-thinking of his brain.

His eyes were concentrated on the casket holding his dead father, Doctor Lawrence Wolenczak, and as he focused on it, Lucas felt intense anger. He couldn't figure out, however, where it was directed: at the God he kept hearing about through the preacher's words for taking his father away, or for Lawrence himself abandoning him yet again.

Even more disturbing were the so very brief half-seconds of happiness that seeped hope into such an otherwise tragic event: he who had neglected his son so much in the past had now been neglected and left for whatever lay beyond death.

Lucas's fists balled in rage at the twisted thought. Immediately disgusted with himself, he blinked away more frustrated tears before sneaking a glance sideways at his mother who, for lack of a better phrase, sat there as if it were nothing.

_Nothing!_ Lucas thought. _How is this nothing!_

* * *

Before he knew it, the funeral service was over. Lucas stayed behind, though, hovering near the freshly dug grave. He forced the tears back, swallowed them down before placing a hand on the headstone, so nicely donated by the UEO.

"It's the least we can do," he had been told. "For a man—and you—who have done so much for us."

"You'll be taken care of, Mr. Wolenczak," he'd been promised. "Don't you worry about it."

He didn't care. It seemed he never had anyone to take care of him, not really.

Someone came up behind him at that moment. Just stood beside him and said nothing, as if their presence alone would be enough to comfort him.

"Ensign," Captain Hudson said when Lucas didn't acknowledge him.

"Captain." The word came out choked, quiet. It seemed his vocal chords couldn't support full words after their hard labor of keeping all the words he wanted to say from flooding out of his mouth.

"It's okay to be upset," Hudson pointed out. "No one expects any different."

"I'm fine," Lucas assured him. _Just go away._

Hudson sucked in a cautious breath. Maybe talking to him _just now_ wasn't the greatest idea. "Just know I'm here if you want to talk."

Lucas's eyes stayed focused on the headstone when he muttered. "Yes sir."

Hudson turned and took a few steps back toward the rest of the senior crew who were watching the scene from a distance. He stopped halfway, though, dead in his tracks, turning back around. He put a hand on the Ensign's shoulder.

Lucas shrugged it off. "I'll be with you guys in a second, okay? Just let me say goodbye."

"What happened between you and your father," Hudson started and kept going, afraid that if he stopped, it would never all come out, "all those years ago—it wasn't because he didn't love you."

"I know that. He was just busy is all. It's fine, really."

"Is it?"

Lucas swallowed hard. "It's just... disgusting, you know?"

Hudson's eyebrow rose. "Disgusting?"

"All this time I've found myself competing with him, subconsciously or literally—whatever—just competing all the same. Trying to be better than him, trying to focus on what _he's_ done and make it better. I've always been compared to him, he being my father and all, but all people usually see when they look at me is him and his work—not _me_." Lucas paused for a moment to see if the Captain would say anything before adding, "You don't know what that's like."

"Maybe not," Hudson commented. "But I know what it's like to lose someone close to you. All these regrets come to your head, and it seems like they won't go away but—"

Lucas turned on him then, breaking off the contact of Hudson's hand on his shoulder.

"No, you _don't_ get it at all. I have no idea what to do now with my life. He's always been there, even when he wasn't. Always a shadow in the daytime, a wishful _dream_," Lucas spat the word as it was the only thing that came to mind in trying to get his point across, "during the night. The closest thing I think I ever _really_ had to an actual father was, in a way, Captain Bridger but... even then... he wasn't Dad. No one could be him."

Lucas turned back toward the grave. "Whether I knew it or not, I built my life around him, but like, not for the reasons son's usually do, you know? I built up the mountain, put him on the same goddam pedestal as everyone else always did. And when I yelled out all my protests, my worries, my... _everything_... it brought it all down. It brought our relationship down. Everything."

Hudson watched as the young Ensign simultaneously let everything out and closed himself off to the world all at once.

"Are you giving up on science, Ensign?" he asked, opting for the easier question.

Again he was silent for a moment as he contemplated it. "I don't know," he admitted finally.

"Look... it just happened. You can't give up just because he's gone. I didn't know him personally, but I can say that your father would never want you to give up on your dreams because something as small as competition is gone. If anything, continue your work in his name."

Lucas bit the inside of his cheek, his despair ever encroaching on his outward appearance. He just wanted to be away from here, away from his father's grave, away from this conversation with a Captain he didn't think knew as much as he thought he did.

He shook his head. _He's just trying to help you, Lucas_, he told himself.

Lucas nodded. Breathed one deep, settling breath. And then another. And another.

He was as calm as he figured he'd ever be from here on out. At least until things settled down, if they ever did.

He thought he grew up when he joined the Navy after the _seaQuest_ returned from Hyperion. And again he thought he had grown after he'd faced death more or less straight in the eyes when Brody died, but it wasn't so.

No, he'd done more growing up in the last hour or so than he had in the last nineteen-odd years of his life—in one giant landslide.

Doctor Lawrence Wolenczak would be proud.

**END**


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